How To Tame The Buying Beast Inside Your Customer

By Fahad HassenPosted Monday, February 7, 2005

What if you can understand and control your customer’s mind? What if you can influence, persuade and motivate your customers to buy from you? Well, I’m not talking about a magic trick or lay down a lesson of motivation. It’s about understanding the different reactions made by the human mind in various situations. I’m going to briefly discuss 3 key aspects of psychological secrets that you can apply in your promotion efforts for a certain increase in customer response. They are,

1. Curiosity
2. Because / Reason Why
3. Greed

Curiosity

What is it? Curiosity can be defined as “the desire to know the unexplored” in simple terms. People want to know things that many others don’t know. They like to discover the ‘secrets’ that only some people know. The desire to know is a compelling force in marketing, so we have:

* Secrets of the Diet Industry Uncovered
* What Time Share Companies Don't Want You To Know
* Msteries of A Youthful Appearance Revealed
* The Hidden Keys of Car Buying

People don’t want

* How to Diet Successfully or
* A Guide to Buying Cars

for example. First set of titles surely outshines the second set of titles because the former takes advantage of curiosity. You must design your advertising in a way that arouses curiosity. Getting to see the powerful of curiosity? (When compared the two sets above)

Because / Reason Why

Telling people a valid reason for your action is another great influencer in human behavior. People will trust you if you can offer a reason for what you are doing. Say you offer a 50% discount on your digital cameras for the last 10 days in this month. People are too smart today and start to think it’s probably because you want to get rid of your defective products or because its 2 days before the expiry date (in case of food items). Wouldn’t you and I think the same way when we see a similar message?

Give them a true believable reason. For example, let’s say you have a slow time of the year and you want to increase your business during this period. Make a special, limited time offer. Offer to throw in an extra free bonus or a special discount simply because it's your "slow time" and you need to pay your staff anyway.

Don’t you think people will believe it? If you can give a solid reason for a particular action, people will have no doubts about what you say - there is simply very little room for doubt.

Greed

People are greedy. I'm not talking about food but 'greedy' in a marketing perspective. Everybody feels from “what’s in it for me” syndrome. They really want to know how your product can benefit them. Notice that, the "customer's will buy benefits and not products". Confused? You'll see what I mean in a minute.

Analyze the following list of benefits written about a digital camera.

* Can store over 200 photos
* Supports every color you can see
* Manual included so you can start even if you have no previous experience

This will certainly open the eyes of a person who has an idea of bu'ying a camera one day. This is in complete contrast to the following, where the 'product' is described.

Customers don't want a memory of 6000k, but they want to store 200 photos. Get it? You must clearly tell the customer how will they benefit by bu'ying your produc't. You can then describe the prod'uct itself, when they are looking for more information.

To make this point clearer, understand that,

"Customer's will bu'y benefits and 'not' the features."

Okay.. Whats the difference between features and benefits? Features describe the product itself - what it has. Benefits describe the advantages a customer gets by bu'ying the product. The first list above is a benefits list and the second is a features list.

Benefits will drive customers to explore more information about the product. This is when you should give them the features and describe the product itself. To summarize, get customers into looking for more info by telling them the benefits and then describe the prod'uct. This will assure the best results.

I laid out just 3 powerful tactics here. There are many more 'explored' and 'unexplored' secrets, and hope you can discover a few too. Please let me know if you do. I hope this information was helpful to you and wish you good luck and success in your future mark'eting efforts.

About the Author
Fahad Hassen is the publisher of “Forbidden Psychological Secrets" eBook, which has over 25 proven secrets of controlling your customer's 'subconcoius' mind and influencing them to b'uy from you.Visit his site at (http://www.mafoor.com/forbidden).